A healthy diet for body, mind and spirit seems ever harder to achieve. In most households, adults are working full-time out of the home, and if someone is staying at home, that can be a full-time job too. I get to the end of the day, to that window for cooking and eating dinner before heading out to a meeting or scouts or soccer practice, and even when I’ve planned a balanced meal, I often find myself without the time to cook it. ...
And it can be even harder to stick to a healthful diet for our minds and spirits. The news is confusing, discouraging, certainly not wholesome, and often scary. Facebook invites us to compare our lives with others who only present their best selves. We are inundated yet still hungry. (Read the whole sermon here:)

"John Lothropp left England for a new world in America, but perhaps the greatest journey he made was in his village in Kent, when he dismantled the framework of belief which confined him to journey into what he felt was a life-giving faith. " Read the whole sermon here:

"One of my favorite Charles Addams cartoons shows a college quad with a banner hung between pillars – “Welcome Class of ‘54”. Gathered below is the reuning class of ’54 – scruffy, in patched clothes, not a pin-striped suit or polished loafer among them. In the caption, one alumnus says to another: 'I thought it was me, but maybe the school’s no damn good.'I am thinking about this cartoon because in June, I’ll return to my college, where there will be reunion banners welcoming alumnae, from members of the class of 1938 to the class of 2013 - none of whom will be in scruffy, patched clothes. And many of us will feel that we are failures compared to those around us." From Pamela Barz's April 22 sermon "Staying Safe/Staying Open" Read the entire sermon here:

"This is the good news the angels offer to the women at the empty tomb and that they, beyond the bounds of the story, offered to the other disciples. Love – love which calls them back into their stories as actors, spreaders of the good news of the power of love, beings of love incarnate, as Jesus was and every other dancer of Life. And this good news comes to us also, inviting us into the dance, into the story, carrying on the love, the life, the power which have flowed through the ages to us and which will flow beyond us to ages yet to come." Read the full sermon here:

“Why are you weeping?” the angels ask Mary. And she answers with the facts – because they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have put him. But it seems the answer isn’t good enough, because Jesus asks her the same question in his guise as the gardener. He’s standing right there, so he’s obviously heard her first answer. But he asks again, “Why are you weeping?” This time she doesn’t bother answering at all, because she thinks this man is only a gardener. She moves right past his question to what she wants to know: What have you done with Jesus’ body? But what would have happened instead if she had taken the time to answer his question? What would have happened if she had pondered why she was weeping? Read the full sermon here:

"Black Panther and the story of Palm Sunday are ultimately both about power and suffering – how we use our power to respond to a suffering world. Do we let our hearts break open or do we keep them closed? Do we place ourselves in the midst of the suffering or above it?" Read the whole sermon here:

"Pay attention. When you listen deeply to someone, so deeply that you feel what they are feeling, so deeply that you are not thinking about what you will say next but only holding them in your love, you are praying. When you feel grateful for a kindness offered to you or for a luxury or privilege you enjoy, you are praying. When you regret something hurtful you said or did – or something helpful you might have said or done but didn’t, you are praying. When you are walking on the beach and stop to marvel at the power of the waves or the intricate whorls of a shell, or at the process which ground rocks to sand, you are praying. You are paying attention to Life with a capital “L”. Read the whole sermon here:

"Revelation is not sealed." That insight today lies at the core of our good news: each of us must cultivate that inner voice, that communion with sheer silence, that relationship with God – whatever word you use. The name doesn’t matter. What matters is that truth not be limited or shut off because we didn’t hear it, didn’t understand it, or didn’t communicate it. Truth speaks through us. Read the whole sermon here:

"I rejoice in giving to this church because this church is doing things I rejoice in!" For our annual Stewardship Sunday, Ann Svensen and Alma Morrison reflected on why and how they rejoice in First Parish. Read their sermon here:

"Worship draws us out of ourselves to engage with the holiness at the heart of creation; it invites the marchers into meditation and draws the mystics into engagement; it engages the orderly in the messiness of relationship and the dancers into the patterns of the year. " Read the whole sermon here:

"With Scituate being 96% white, the statistics I’m about to talk about may feel foreign to you. Though experiences like Joy’s may bring them closer to home. But until we understand these statistics are our statistics, until we understand the people behind the statistics as our people, nothing will change. This may not be your life but it must be our concern if we are to make real that world where all are valued regardless of the color of their skin." Read the full sermon here:

Once upon a time, long, long ago, not in a galaxy far far away, but in this one, in this world, some scholars say in Iran, some in Turkey, there were Zoroastrian priests studying the skies for wisdom. .... Continue reading:

Seventy five years ago last Sunday, the movie Casablanca opened. November 26, 1942.... In a week when we’ve had North Korean missile tests bring the threat of war closer to our shores than it’s been since those days of World War II, the President retweeting videos purporting to show Muslim violence, the passing of the Republican tax bill with its topsy turvy values, and the firing for sexual harassment of Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor, two men who came into our homes on weekday mornings and Saturday evenings, what hope for peace does Casablanca offer us today? Read the whole sermon here: